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Hannah Landry is planning to take a pass on the first day of class this fall.
But she’s pretty sure her new professors will be OK with that.
The 18-year-old graduate of Hants East Rural High School will miss her first day at the University of Ottawa in September because she’ll be in Sweden presenting her high school science project to an international panel of judges.
Landry’s project, which examined how eggshells can be used to filter out cadmium in drinking water, earned her a free trip to Stockholm, where she’ll compete in the international Stockholm Junior Water Prize competition.
The competition runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 5. It brings together young people from 30 different countries to present their water-related projects and vie for the US$5,000 grand prize.
Landry, a native of Elmsdale, said she was excited to learn that she was selected for the trip.
“There was a little screaming and hopping up and down,” she admitted.
Landry was one of the top five finalists at the regional science fair this year and won a bronze medal at May’s national competition in Alberta. Her project compared the filtering capacity of eggs from six different breeds of chickens to determine which one most effectively removed cadmium. The winner was a heritage breed called Hungarian yellow, which filtered out 80.7 per cent of cadmium.
While the remaining level of cadmium still doesn’t meet World Health Organization standards for drinking water, Landry said with a little more experimentation and fine tuning, that could improve.
Aside from the anticipation of her first trip to Europe, Landry said she’s excited that her project could eventually make a real difference in the world.
She hopes her work will one day lead to the creation of a simple, low-cost filtration system to be used in developing countries with high cadmium levels.
“Hopefully,” she said, “I get to do more experiments with it and refine the process.”
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